第82章 A TALE OF A TAPU -CONTINUED(1)

TUESDAY,JULY 16.-It rained in the night,sudden and loud,in Gilbert Island fashion.Before the day,the crowing of a cock aroused me and I wandered in the compound and along the street.

The squall was blown by,the moon shone with incomparable lustre,the air lay dead as in a room,and yet all the isle sounded as under a strong shower,the eaves thickly pattering,the lofty palms dripping at larger intervals and with a louder note.In this bold nocturnal light the interior of the houses lay inscrutable,one lump of blackness,save when the moon glinted under the roof,and made a belt of silver,and drew the slanting shadows of the pillars on the floor.Nowhere in all the town was any lamp or ember;not a creature stirred;I thought I was alone to be awake;but the police were faithful to their duty;secretly vigilant,keeping account of time;and a little later,the watchman struck slowly and repeatedly on the cathedral bell;four o'clock,the warning signal.It seemed strange that,in a town resigned to drunkenness and tumult,curfew and reveille should still be sounded and still obeyed.

The day came,and brought little change.The place still lay silent;the people slept,the town slept.Even the few who were awake,mostly women and children,held their peace and kept within under the strong shadow of the thatch,where you must stop and peer to see them.Through the deserted streets,and past the sleeping houses,a deputation took its way at an early hour to the palace;the king was suddenly awakened,and must listen (probably with a headache)to unpalatable truths.Mrs.Rick,being a sufficient mistress of that difficult tongue,was spokeswoman;she explained to the sick monarch that I was an intimate personal friend of Queen Victoria's;that immediately on my return I should make her a report upon Butaritari;and that if my house should have been again invaded by natives,a man-of-war would be despatched to make reprisals.It was scarce the fact -rather a just and necessary parable of the fact,corrected for latitude;and it certainly told upon the king.He was much affected;he had conceived the notion (he said)that I was a man of some importance,but not dreamed it was as bad as this;and the missionary house was tapu'd under a fine of fifty dollars.

So much was announced on the return of the deputation;not any more;and I gathered subsequently that much more had passed.The protection gained was welcome.It had been the most annoying and not the least alarming feature of the day before,that our house was periodically filled with tipsy natives,twenty or thirty at a time,begging drink,fingering our goods,hard to be dislodged,awkward to quarrel with.Queen Victoria's friend (who was soon promoted to be her son)was free from these intrusions.Not only my house,but my neighbourhood as well,was left in peace;even on our walks abroad we were guarded and prepared for;and,like great persons visiting a hospital,saw only the fair side.For the matter of a week we were thus suffered to go out and in and live in a fool's paradise,supposing the king to have kept his word,the tapu to be revived and the island once more sober.

TUESDAY,JULY 23.-We dined under a bare trellis erected for the Fourth of July;and here we used to linger by lamplight over coffee and tobacco.In that climate evening approaches without sensible chill;the wind dies out before sunset;heaven glows a while and fades,and darkens into the blueness of the tropical night;swiftly and insensibly the shadows thicken,the stars multiply their number;you look around you and the day is gone.It was then that we would see our Chinaman draw near across the compound in a lurching sphere of light,divided by his shadows;and with the coming of the lamp the night closed about the table.The faces of the company,the spars of the trellis,stood out suddenly bright on a ground of blue and silver,faintly designed with palm-tops and the peaked roofs of houses.Here and there the gloss upon a leaf,or the fracture of a stone,returned an isolated sparkle.All else had vanished.We hung there,illuminated like a galaxy of stars INVACUO;we sat,manifest and blind,amid the general ambush of the darkness;and the islanders,passing with light footfalls and low voices in the sand of the road,lingered to observe us,unseen.

On Tuesday the dusk had fallen,the lamp had just been brought,when a missile struck the table with a rattling smack and rebounded past my ear.Three inches to one side and this page had never been written;for the thing travelled like a cannon ball.It was supposed at the time to be a nut,though even at the time I thought it seemed a small one and fell strangely.

WEDNESDAY,JULY 24.-The dusk had fallen once more,and the lamp been just brought out,when the same business was repeated.And again the missile whistled past my ear.One nut I had been willing to accept;a second,I rejected utterly.A cocoa-nut does not come slinging along on a windless evening,making an angle of about fifteen degrees with the horizon;cocoa-nuts do not fall on successive nights at the same hour and spot;in both cases,besides,a specific moment seemed to have been chosen,that when the lamp was just carried out,a specific person threatened,and that the head of the family.I may have been right or wrong,but Ibelieved I was the mark of some intimidation;believed the missile was a stone,aimed not to hit,but to frighten.

No idea makes a man more angry.I ran into the road,where the natives were as usual promenading in the dark;Maka joined me with a lantern;and I ran from one to another,glared in quite innocent faces,put useless questions,and proffered idle threats.Thence Icarried my wrath (which was worthy the son of any queen in history)to the Ricks.They heard me with depression,assured me this trick of throwing a stone into a family dinner was not new;that it meant mischief,and was of a piece with the alarming disposition of the natives.And then the truth,so long concealed from us,came out.